Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Did you know that the A-form (our application
for promotion) specifically asks about your involvement in our
community? (To wit: "Professionally related community activities in
cultural, educational, and benevolent organizations")

While promotion shouldn't be your primary reason for contributing to
your community, it probably helps to know that the college cares about
and values your service to our community outside the college. So if you
were hesitant to do community service, and wondering about whether or
not you could or should sacrifice any of your hard-earned down-time,
consider that you will benefit from donating that time -- although I'm
pretty sure our community partners will benefit more. And yes,
union-organized community service events count.

Finally, some beautiful spring weather.

What kind of union-organized community service events am I talking about? I'm glad you asked. (Okay, I'm pretending you asked.) They include:

Suffolk AHRC (Association for the Help of Retarded Children) plant sales on the Ammerman and Grant campuses during the spring and fall semesters.

Participation in the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks in October of each year.

Professors on Wheels, our home-grown community outreach program that provides mini-lectures, classes and workshops on a variety of topics to local nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and libraries.

Obviously, the first two options are very specific in terms of date and time and content. If you're interested in volunteering for a future AHRC plant sale, email anita [at] fascc.org and she'll make sure you're on the list for next semester. If you'd like to walk to support breast cancer research on behalf of the FA, make sure you read The Word when we return in the fall to be informed about where and when the FA will be participating in the Jones Beach walk, as well as how to donate money towards this important cause.

Professors on Wheels, however, offers you a little more flexibility in terms of time and subject. When you participate in Professors on Wheels, you pick the topic, presentation-type (i.e. lecture or workshop), and length of your "course" offering -- most faculty play to their strengths and choose topics that are related to their field or discipline but appeal to a general audience. A 100-word description of the course, along with a brief biography, is required as an application -- this write up is then passed to our community partners, and they decide, based on their participants' interests, which workshops or lectures they'd like to bring to their location.

Professors on Wheels has received a lot of praise and won some well-deserved attention from local news outlets -- it's a high-profile, highly-engaging and rewarding way to donate your time and expertise to the surrounding community.

If you'd like to become part of Professors on Wheels, visit fassc.org and click the link under "Community Outreach" to download the application. Send it to Ray DiSanza (disanzr [at] sunysuffolk.edu) or Anita, and they'll make sure you're added to the roster of participating faculty.

Monday, March 27, 2017

I'd like to think that your first academic year here at SCCC has gone smoothly and that you've found your working conditions here
optimal. Also, I'd hope that if you've run into anything problematic, you've
addressed your concerns with your mentor first and they've provided you
with some sound and useful advice for tackling the problem.

If
you ever run into a problem that seems larger than your mentor,
academic chair, or department supervisor can handle -- specifically, one
that includes a violation of our contract -- OR, if your academic chair
or department supervisor is part of the problem (fingers crossed, that
won't be the case) -- that's an appropriate time to ask the FA's
Grievance Officer, Dante Morelli, about filing a grievance.

Any member of the bargaining unit --
even those who aren't voting union members -- may be represented by the union
when he or she files a grievance. Just remember that timeliness is a real and
pressing issue; if you're going to file a grievance, you need to do so within
30 days of when you noticed the violation (or should have noticed the
violation).

Once
the grievance has been filed, the FA will work to settle the matter
satisfactorily through arbitration. But if you're someone who'd like to
avoid the grievance and arbitration process, the FA has a brand new
Conflict Mediation Program (CMP) to help you do just that.

The
CMP assists its members in addressing conflict proactively and
confidentially before problems become bigger problems. Several FA
members, all of whom undergo intensive training, are available to
provide neutral, judgment-free, confidential mediation between members,
or between members and administration or staff, in a confidential, safe
space. Did I mention that it's confidential? Everyone involved must sign
a confidentiality agreement. Additionally, it's important to remember that all parties must approach mediation willingly and in good faith. It doesn't work -- in fact, it's not a true mediation -- if one of the parties feels like he or she has been coerced or forced to participate.

For more information about the CMP, contact Dante Morelli at 451-4963.

Note
that most grievances don't approach arbitration because they
can be resolved beforehand -- sometimes through the CMP and sometimes
less formally -- but if they do go to arbitration (and the
FA decides which grievances go to arbitration and which do not), your
union
will be there for you.

Friday, March 24, 2017

Congratulations to our new members for reaching the mid-semester mark in
your first or second semester as full time faculty at SCCC. This is no small
feat; by now, particularly if you're teaching faculty and deeply
entrenched in mid-term exams or paper grading, you're beginning to feel
the weight of your tasks, big and small. You may even be able to see
that weight quite literally, as all of the grading begins to stack up on
your desk or fill your briefcase or backpack.

This is also the point in the semester where I find I'm most frequently
reminded of all the burdens our students are carrying, too. I issue
mid-term academic alerts and watch a line of anxious faces form at the
front of the classroom, attempting to speak with me before class about
missing assignments and less-than-acceptable grades. I'm met in my
office hours with students who wish to let me know that because of their
1) caregiver schedule 2) employer demands 3) change in career plans,
they're considering withdrawing from my course.

As you may have noticed, Wednesday was the deadline for students to
withdraw from courses on their own -- they could have done so at the
registrar or through their MYSCCC accounts. Usually, I put this deadline
into my course outlines and remind students via announcements in class
and/or class emails and posts in Blackboard, as a courtesy and a facet
of my role as a faculty advisor (new students simply aren't aware of
most college policies at this point).

My spring break was spent "finding" my writing desk again. Yours?

Many students, however, don't realize their grade is in jeopardy before
this deadline: in fact, as I've been finding this week, many students
realize it the day AFTER the deadline has passed. I don't know why they
ignore repeated warnings to check their grades before the deadline:
they just do. And when they realize their grade is
less-than-satisfactory, they show up at your office door, panicked and
contrite or angry and defensive or ambiguous and ambivalent (or a messy
combination of all three).

Of course the first thing we should do, as responsible faculty and
caring advisors, is see where our students might improve their study or
work habits to increase their grade point average over the remaining
weeks. Some students will respond admirably to this approach and do
whatever they need to do to pass the course by May. Others,
however, will be less sure of themselves and wish to abandon the
endeavor completely. Those students will ask you for a withdrawal. Or,
more commonly, they'll simply disappear -- that is, they won't return to
class, although you may see them slinking by you on campus, trying to
remain unnoticed.

As new teaching faculty (if you're new teaching faculty) it's important
that you know the reach of the withdrawal or "W" grade. First, know that
we do not -- yet -- have an official withdrawal policy (which is
ridiculous, and entrenched in campus politics, but nevertheless, a sad
fact). So the following is advice from a faculty member who believes
that we should know the implications of each and every grade we assign.

Students may not withdraw from a class after the mid-semester deadline
of their own volition. At this point, they must go to the registrar's
office, find withdrawal slips, fill them out, and have you sign them.
Second, before you sign a withdrawal (or assign it as a final grade at
the end of the semester), you and your students should understand how
the W grade will affect them if they are receiving financial aid.

If a student is taking the minimum number of credits to be considered
full-time (12), and then they take or are assigned a "W" grade -- even
at the end of the semester -- their credit load for the semester is
reduced. The student's financial aid, calculated based on the number of
courses the student takes each semester, is also adjusted accordingly.

This means that students who take the minimum number of courses may be
reduced to part-time status once they receive a grade of "W," and their
part-time status will reduce the amount of financial aide for which they
are eligible in future semesters. Most students in their first semester
here are unaware of this consequence; in fact, most students -- even
those in third or fourth semesters -- are unaware of the potential
problems created for them by the "W" grade.

Ideally, any "W" assigned after the mid-semester point should be done
because of extenuating circumstances. As teaching faculty and advisors
to our students, we need to be discrete in our assignment of the "W"
grade and assign it only when a student as requested the "W" and
understands -- fully and unequivocally -- the potential effects if he or
she is receiving financial aid. While we may wish to be kind and assign
a "W" to those students who disappear from our classes a day or two
after the withdrawal deadline, it's unwise to use the "W" if you haven't
had a frank conversation with the student about what it means.

In May, if you have students who have disappeared mysteriously from
your classroom but remained on your roster, and if you are adverse to
assigning them the failing grades that they mostly likely deserve (you
old softie!), I recommend emailing them and asking if they wish to
receive a "W," and if they're aware of the implications and (very real,
sometimes very devastating) effects of a "W" grade. Some of these
students will be paying out of pocket for their classes and will be
surprisingly cavalier about their grade(s). Others, particularly those
receiving aid, will be grateful for the consideration and advisement and
may prefer to take the "F" so that they may retain their full-time
status and continue receiving their aid.

Even if you elect not to email "ghost" students at the end of the
semester, at least you can assign failing grades knowing that, in the
long run, it is usually the wiser, kinder course of action -- and that
the "W"grade, when assigned without discretion, can be more of a burden
than a gift to the student who couldn't get his or her act together this
semester.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get my act together -- at this time of the year, our students aren't the only ones in the weeds.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Happy Spring Break, New Members. I hope everyone withstood the snow and rain yesterday and that your recess has been peaceful, productive and restful.

This week I received a significant letter from the college, one that we spend much of our academic career working toward at SCCC: a letter from the president of the college informing me that he'd approved my "promotion in academic rank from Associate to Professor," effective at the beginning of our next academic year.

Yay! Finally!

This was a joyful moment, and also a kind of underwhelming one. Underwhelming simply because not much is going to change in my academic/work life after this point -- there will be no magical shift or transformation that signals the end of an era or a dramatic end to my involvement at the college. For the most part (with one or two exceptions), my career post-promotion is going to look very similar to my career over the past few years. This is because for the second half of my career here, I've been trying to practice deliberation, and be much for mindful, before accepting service opportunities.

Service to the college comprises a large part of our responsibilities as faculty, and -- sometimes practically, sometimes theoretically -- also helps the college function. You're probably already familiar with some aspect of service through conversations with your mentor or departmental meetings; however, your first year as a faculty member is not supposed to be one that's heavy in committee work or meetings. Your eligibility for your first promotion, though, is going to arrive much faster than you expect -- so it's good to begin, particularly when you have some down time during spring recess, to plan your career and what that might look like.

I spoke about this kind of thing last semester at our FA Discussion Series event titled "What You Need to Know In Your First Year (and Beyond)," but if you missed it, and if you were to search The Undercurrent's archive of previous New Member Discussion Series events, you'd find many posts on this topic -- most notably, "The Longview: Anticipating and Planning Your Career at SCCC" and "On Purpose." Reading through those posts might help -- hopefully will help -- you create a long-term plan that will guide you through the next few years.

I write "the next few years" because we need to allow flexibility in our planning. We need to know that aspects of the college are going to change, committees will come and go, opportunities to be on those committees will come and go, and you'll have to revise your perspective, both short-term and long-term, accordingly. But being aware of what is possible at this point in your career, and being mindful of your interests and values, your level of expertise, your available time, and your goals for the future can help you avoid dedicating time and effort to committees that aren't the right fit (for you or them).

Granted, sometimes you don't know that a committee isn't a good fit until you've served on it for a semester. If this happens to you, don't be afraid to gracefully and expediently excuse yourself from the group. There are always new service opportunities that will arise. There will always be faculty members who can take your place while you find a better way to serve your department, your campus, and the college.

So to that end, as I am happily, officially, and finally at the end of the oft-dreaded promotion cycle, I am pleased to share with you these highlights from "What You Need to Know In Your First Year (and Beyond)":

Create a Plan from a Vision or
Desire

1. Answer this question: Where you see yourself in ten
years?(OR, What do you want to do with your next decade?)

At
Suffolk County Community College

As
a professional in your field or discipline

Personally

2. Consider (i.e. write down) your various areas of responsibility at the college:

Teaching and Other Duties(Other
duties
= the
daily lives of non-classroom faculty)

Service to the College and Community

Department/Area

Campus

College

Community

Personal and Professional Growth

Research
and Scholarship

3. Break down your 10-year plan by aligning it with:

Daily
Duties
(Teaching/Non-Teaching)

Departmental
Service

Campus
Service

College
Service

Community
Service

Professional
Development

4. Now that you've taken your "Future Self" and divided him or her six different ways, consider: Which area holds the most challenging or ambitious "future self"?

5. Next, consider: Where do I stand now in
each of the following areas?

Daily
Duties (Teaching/Non-Teaching)

Departmental
Service

Campus
Service

College
Service

Community
Service

Professional
Development

6. Make rules for yourself, follow them, and try again if you mess up.

Example:
I must take a week to consider before
beginning any new projects or commitments

Take
stock of
your other commitments

Consider
whether or
not, realistically, you could handle the additional responsibility

If
you can, great

If
not, do not fret

7. Make a conscious effort to think about
your main goals as an educator(this comes from faculty member Jill
Malik, Social Science)

Monday, February 20, 2017

If you would like a particular issue brought to the attention of the FA (separate
from a grievance) your Executive Council Representative is the person you should contact.

An EC Representative's primary charge is to serve as a liaison
between the union's membership and its officers. You may have noticed, however,that our officers are pretty approachable and easy to speak to, so the other
significant function of the Executive Council is that it occasionally acts as a
decision-making, or governing, body within the union.

Because that's a fairly important
charge, EC Representatives are elected by members within their academic areas
(although some academic areas are grouped together). This is one of the reasons
it's so important to become a voting member of the union. (If you haven't yet,
please do!) You'll find the following list of EC Representatives available also on the FA's web site under Contact information:

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Greetings,
new members! I hope you managed to survive the snowfall of last week
without any traffic accidents or lack of electricity, and that this week
your classes and meetings and daily tasks are comfortably back on
schedule.

Remember
our last blog post, when I wrote about Conference Reimbursement? I just
want to emphasize how fortunate we are to have a faculty union that
negotiated, and continues to protect, our right to funding for
professional development. $1700 per person, particularly when multiplied
by our membership, seems like a lot of money, doesn't it? And, of
course, it is -- but we have to remember that $1700 is intended
to stretch across two years. If you're familiar with the rising cost of
airfare -- and/or the astronomical costs of staying in "the" conference
hotel for the duration of a conference -- you'll know that this $1700 is
not going to last beyond, well, one or two conferences (depending, of
course, on how long you stay and how far away the conference is
located).

Conferences (and the books you purchase at them) are expensive.

In
your first years as a tenure-track faculty member, you'll be expected
to stay current in your field by attending relevant local and/or
regional conferences. There's no magic number -- although I'd suggest
that a minimum of one per year demonstrates a comfortable commitment to
one's professional development. With each subsequent promotion, however,
and as with most aspects of your career, the stakes are raised the
higher you climb toward full Professor or PA 2 or Specialist 2. You'll
be expected to attend -- and eventually present at -- larger, more
widely-recognized events on a national scale.

This,
of course, will take money. My trip to LA in March of last year, for instance, to
attend the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing
Programs (AWP), cost well over $1700. Such is life -- it's the premier
conference in my field and I was presenting on a panel, so I said
"bye-bye" pretty swiftly to my conference allowance.

SO. When I attended AWP last week in Washington, D.C., I had to pay out of pocket with no chance of reimbursement for my expenses, right?

Not
necessarily. Because, well, I'm a planner by nature, I knew I'd want to attend the conference this year. Additionally, I knew that the Faculty Association has ALSO
negotiated with the college and county for additional funds for faculty development and
retraining: $30,000 per year, to be exact. Assistance for the next
academic period is awarded to faculty who apply by April 15 of each
year. The committee that oversees these applications awards funds
first and foremost to faculty who require retraining. Then, after
retraining needs have been met, those faculty who have applied for
assistance for faculty development (like my attendance at the summer
writers' conference) are awarded based on the strength of a faculty
member's application and the amount of money still available in the
fund.

So
if you anticipate attending a conference or two next year -- and if you
suspect you'll use your entire $1800 conference allowance pretty early,
like yours truly (remember, the amount increases in September) -- you should consider applying for Faculty Retraining
and Development assistance this spring. One way to make sure you
understand the process and follow it correctly is to attend a Faculty
Retraining and Development workshop one of our three campuses this
semester, held by new FA Secretary Cynthia Eaton.

The
Ammerman Campus workshop was last week -- but that doesn't mean you
can't attend on a different campus if you're interested in learning
more. The dates for the remaining workshops, held during common hour
(11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.) are as follows:

Wednesday, February 15 (tomorrow!) on the Grant Campus in Captree 104.

Wednesday, February 22 (next week!) on the Eastern Campus in Corchaug 18.

Of
course, if you can't make either of these workshops, simply email Cynthia Eaton with your concerns at cynthia [at] fascc.org. She'll be happy to
help. Or ask your mentor, who may be able to answer your questions after
having gone through the process him or herself.

(And if you are interested in attending one of these workshops, give Cynthia a heads up by registering here.)

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

By
now, hopefully you've settled into your second semester as a full-time
faculty member quite nicely. You're fully prepped for classes or you
resumed your duties shortly after the holiday -- and now you feel
comfortable enough with your regular job duties to venture out to some
conferences or seminars for a little professional development.

Maybe you feel like engaging in some pretty major
professional development. In fact, maybe the professional development
opportunity takes place in another state. Maybe that state is far away,
like, say, California. Maybe the city in California is a fairly
expensive city, like, oh, Los Angeles. Maybe you need to stay for three
or four days just to attend all of the panel discussions and workshops
and poster sessions that would make a trip like that worth the trouble
and expense.

And
maybe your bank account will be flat-out busted by the time you're done
paying for expenses like registration fees, air fare, lodging, and
meals.

Or wait -- maybe it won't be!

One
of the most beneficial parts of the contract negotiated by our Faculty
Association is the part that provides for 1) "T" days that you make take
(instead of sick days or personal leave days) for conference attendance
and 2) reimbursement for expenses such as the ones listed above.
According to our most recent Memorandum of Agreement (MOA),
each faculty member is allotted a total of $1700 to attend conferences
over the next two years -- from September 2015 to September 2017. In
September 2017, the amount allotted increases to $1800.

The annual conference I'll attend tomorrow! Yay!

How do I access this money?
you ask. Great question! The answer is, like at most institutions,
slowly and sometimes painfully and through the careful application to
the college's administration via forms -- a necessary evil, and one that
shouldn't prove too cumbersome or unwieldy provided that you download
the right forms and follow the proper steps.

First, you need to submit a request at least six weeks prior to the
date of the conference or professional obligation. The request form
requires you to estimate the cost of travel, hotel, registration, meals,
etc. and support it with documents that prove your intention to attend
the event (like a conference registration receipt, or the letter that
confirms your participation as a reader or panelist). You can find this
form here, as
well as the Travel Expense Voucher (see below) on the front page of the
college's governance web site. (Wait -- you didn't know we even had a
college governance web site? This post is chock full of information,
isn't it? More on college governance later -- that's a story for a later
blog!)

You'll need to have this form signed by your academic chair -- he or
she must approve your attendance first -- and then you (or the chair)
needs to give the form to your department's administrative assistant. He
or she will forward this on to the Executive Dean's office for your
campus.

Note: Why can't you just forward it to the Executive Dean's office
yourself? Well, the administrative assistant for your department needs
to know about (i.e. actually see; become familiar with) the request
because eventually, after the Executive Dean approves the request and
forwards the appropriate material to the Business Office, he or she will
need to enter a requisition into Banner for you, which will generate a
Purchase Order Number, which will result in you being reimbursed the
requested funds. If these steps aren't followed, you won't receive a
payment. So long story short is: fill out the paperwork, have it signed,
give it to the department administrative assistant.

Once the Executive Dean's office and the Central Business Office
have finished doing their thing, they'll send you a nice letter in the
mail notifying you that your conference attendance has been approved.
Also, they'll provide you with copies of the College
Business/Contractual Travel Payment Request Form & Instructions, as
well as the Travel Expense Voucher. Hold on to these items until you
return from your conference.

When you attend your conference, you have to note your absence from
your campus in your faculty leave report. There's no option for
"conference attendance" in that screen, so instead you should type a
note to your supervisor (reminding him or her about the approved
conference attendance) in the notes section of your monthly leave
report.

Once home from your conference, you need to fill out the Travel
Expense Voucher as well as the Payment Request Form. Once again your
academic chair will be asked for his or her signature the Travel Expense
Voucher and the Payment Request Form, and then you'll forward those
forms, as well as everything listed below to the Executive Dean's
office:

The Payment Request Form

The Travel Expense Voucher

Your conference badge

Your conference brochure (hang on to all of the handouts, people)

The conference daily agenda or program

A conference report (an account and evaluation of the meetings you
attended along with comments about its usefulness to you as a faculty
member)

Relevant receipts, including those for payment of the conference
fee, payment for hotel accommodations, payment for an auto rental,
payment for tolls, payment for parking, payment for cab fare if a
shuttle isn't available, and payment for airfare or train tickets, etc.
If you drive to the conference, you can submit a mileage request form, also available on the college web site.

It's
important to note two things: The first is that Remyou should submit your
travel vouchers and supporting documentation and mileage requests within
two and a half months of attending the conference -- otherwise
reimbursement may be denied. The second is that it generally takes a
campus Executive Dean's office two weeks to process the paperwork, and
sometimes longer. So while you shouldn't expect to be reimbursed
instantly, if you follow the guidelines and fill out everything
correctly, you'll receive a reimbursement check before too long.

The Faculty Association of Suffolk Community College

A Union of Professionals

about the new member mentoring program

The primary goal of the Mentoring Program is to instill a sense of community for new members via the Faculty Association. The program consists of activities and events designed to assist new faculty members with adjustment to college life and serve as an introduction to union activity.

about the blog

From September through May, the newest faculty members of SCCC (and their mentors) will receive links to weekly posts featuring information and advice pertinent to their first year experience at the college.

about the new member discussion series

The Faculty Association’s New Member Program will hold four professional development panel discussions throughout the year in cooperation with the Office for Faculty and Professional Advancement. These sessions will be moderated by the chair of the New Member Program and feature mentors and junior members of the faculty. Topics are intended to help new members shape their career paths at SCCC with purpose, efficiency, and confidence.